Thursday, 9 May 2013

Flames of War - Help Requested!!

I am busy painting up my Pak 40 and I have run into a problem with the crew.

I have not given the soldiers any thought until now because painting up the tanks did not require knowledge of the units they belong to as the camouflage of the vehicles could be pretty much any unit to the best of my knowledge.

This brings me to the problem, I now need to decide on an army list / unit choice. Since childhood the Fallschrimjager have appealed to me as well as the Gebirgsjager a close second. The 'Open Fire' set models cant really be painted as Fallschrimjager, can they???

The picture below shows a soldier in a 'jacket' only and so could be painted on the models and maybe I could get away with it on such a small scale 15mm??

Will the helmets present a problem though??

This picture below shows the 'jacket and pants overall type thing' they wore which would be difficult to get away with an the models.

If I wanted a FallschrimjagerKompanie army list which is the best book,

Earth and Steel

or Grey Wolf?

From my no knowledge perspective I like the Grey Wolf as it seems to have more options available?

I think the 'Open Fire' soldiers could be painted as Gebirgjager easily enough.

13 comments:

Hi, just stumbled onto your blog by chance. I'll try to help out and answer some of your questions. You can paint up the Open Fire set can be painted as FJ but it depends on how much you care about the details.Every helmet will need trimming and cleaning upYou will need to carve off a lot of equipment that they weren't fighting in the field with, such as Gas mask cannisters, mess tins, entrenchment tool.Front pockets carved off and coat extended downwards.Randomly sculpt pockets on the trousers where thigh portion is exposed.If you only slightly care then I would suggest just focusing on the helmets.

As for Gebirgsjaeger you should be able to fairly easily. I would recommend that you sculpt on backpacks on a few of the figures and then adjust the ratio of helmets to field caps to be more field caps. If you can, sculpt on a few large collars as the jacket for the Gebirgs is fairly iconic. Carve off the extra equipment off the back such as the entrenching tool, mess tin, gas mask cannister.If you only slightly care then I would suggest just focusing on the field caps and backpacks.

Thanks for a very extensive reply, your comments are much appreciated. Converting to FJ seems like a tonne of work. Might just buy a box of FJ and go from there. The GJ seem more realistic from a modelling point of view.

At this scale it is probably more worthwhile if you can swing it to just buy the blister of FJ if you specifically want them. It would take a lot of time to change a lot of details over the 30+ models for a platoon.

As for the books, I don't know much about Germans but is Earth and Steel getting updated with one of the new compilations?

Earth and Steel will be replaced in June to coincide with D-Day and be released as Atlantik Wall bringing the book up-to-date with version 3 of the FoW rules.

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=3823

Another option for the gun crew would be to convert them to be Waffen-SS. You can get away with leaving the tunics and equipment the same but paint them a camo pattern such as Pea Dot for Oak Leaf. The SS usually had helmet covers so have a look at the normal grenadiers from Open Fire, some of which have helmet covers which you could try copying if you want to sculpt helmet covers on the gun crew. Its something I'm considering trying myself! There's an article on the flames of war website about doing it but I can't find it right now!

If your keen on FJ then the best sourcebook for them is Bridge by Bridge. Gives you FT and FV options with a lot of divisional support especially tanks and the ability to boost your AT firepower with Panzershreks and Panzerfaust/Rifle/MG teams.

Fortress Europes is good for FJ as you can take Tigers, Cassino offers fortifications but you lose the Panzerfausts. There is also the LW PDF for the FJ Pioneers. Again fewer options with these guys and they are very expensive 345pts for a platoon with 3 Squads and a Supply Truck.

If your keen on FJ then pick a sourcebook that reflects the era/campaign/battle that you like the most. Me I'm really into the Market Garden campaign & the history of the 6th FJ Regiment - Bridge by Bridge means I can field the 6FJR commander Von der Heydte.

I would get two FJ Platoon Blisters to start you off. While the Open Fire stuff is great its Heer infanty and looks completely different.

Trained are cheaper but your easier to hit e.g. gone to ground and concealed they need 5's short range or 6's long range vs. 6's short range for veterans in the same situation and can't hit you at all at long range.

Each list gives you slightly different options in terms of armour/artillery and heer support as well.